How Do You Calculate Combinations & Permutations?
How many possible winning lottery number combinations are there? How many different combinations can be created for a dial lock? These questions and more can be answered with the statistics tools: combinations and permutations. Combinations and permutations are types of calculations used in statistics and precalculus. This article will explain the difference between combinations and permutations and will teach you how to calculate combinations and permutations by hand and with excel. Step 1 Define a combinationA combination is the number of ways that that objects can be arranged, in which order of the objects does not matter. This means that AB is not a different way to arrange the items A and B than BA. A good explanation of the order of objects not mattering is ordering a banana split. If the banana split has a scoop of chocolate, vanilla and strawberry ice cream on it, they may be in any order and you still have a banana split with chocolate, vanilla and strawberry ice cream on it.R
